Getting Familiar with Your Demon: That Old Black Magic, Book 4 (29 page)

She shoved her arms over her chest. “I am
not
going to eat with my boobs hanging out like this, Ryan Hollister.”

A chuckle came from Bram. “Ooh, she called you by your full name. You’re in trouble now, bud.”

Ry didn’t look the least bit worried. “I’m only trying to save her from slopping on her sweater. You’d think she’d appreciate my ingenuity.”

“Puh-lease. We all know who’s the messier eater here.” She offered Ry a pointed stare.

“Can I help it if I enjoy savoring my meals?” His smile was slow and sexy, leaving her with little doubt that he was imagining her as his next main course.

Letting him in could mean losing him forever.

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

© 2012 Vivi Andrews

Elizabeth “Biz” Marks has the magic touch when it comes to matters of the heart—except her own. In a slightly tipsy fit of loneliness, she once tried to harness a little love mojo to work in her favor. Instead the spell mutated into a nightmarish curse that kills off her boyfriends on her favorite holiday: Valentine’s Day.

With three
permanently
ex-boyfriends on her conscience and another hearts-and-flowers holiday approaching, the last thing she needs is a too-gorgeous-to-be-true reporter snooping around.

Biz just has extraordinarily bad luck, or she’s a bona-fide Black Widow who bumps off her boyfriends for a chunk of the inheritance money. Either way, Mark Ellison is sure there’s a story here. Especially when his attempts to charm her send her into a panic.

The harder Biz tries to keep Mark and his beguiling dimples as far away as possible, the harder he digs to get at the truth. Now she’s beginning to wonder if his is the love that will finally break the curse…or if she’ll be burying her heart along with him.

Warning, this book contains curses, meddling ghosts, nosy neighbors and enough peppermint Schnapps to drown the inhibitions of even the most cautious witch.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Ghosts of Boyfriends Past:

Had he gotten more gorgeous since the last time she saw him? Or was it just the shock of seeing him for the first time in good lighting? The face was still mouthwatering, but it was the
arms
her memory had failed to honor. In spite of the winter chill, he wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his sleeves were shoved up to the elbow, revealing tanned, corded forearms. Those arms made him seem capable, somehow. As if like Atlas he could lift the world.

“Ms. Marks. Fancy seeing you here.”

He smiled. Biz’s heart rate doubled.

She forced herself to swallow the sawdust and gave him a pathetic smile. “Yeah. Fancy.”

“That’s him?” Gillian asked in the world’s loudest whisper. “You said he was a hunk, but I thought we were grading on the Parish Island curve. God’s balls, he’d be a stud at a Hollywood premiere. Move over, McDreamy.”

Biz shot her a please-for-the-love-of-God-shut-up look. Where was a muzzle when you needed one?

Mark wove his way over to their table, a sly little smile saying he’d heard every word.
Conceited jerk.

His eyes rolled over her from the top of her head to the table’s edge and back up again. Biz squashed the urge to check her hair. She hadn’t brushed it after falling out of bed, but she refused to feel self-conscious about her sloppy knot.

Even if he looked like he stepped right out of a catalogue, starched, groomed and gorgeous. Biz probably looked like she’d survived a cyclone flying away with her trailer. His expression was appreciative, but she needed him to stop staring. Only a deeply cursed man could appreciate her when she resembled a half-groomed yeti.

“Are you stalking me?”

“Good morning to you too, Biz. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

Before she could reply, Molly materialized at his side as if by teleportation. “Can I get you anything?” she asked breathlessly, her eyes locked hypnotically on his face, Kierkegaard forgotten on the back table. “Anything at all.”

Mark ducked his head, and Biz thought she saw a touch of rose on his cheekbones. Was he
blushing
? Had Molly’s slavish adoration actually embarrassed him? “Just an orange juice. Thanks.”

Molly nodded five times in rapid succession, channeling an existential bobblehead, and then darted off to collect the nectar for her new deity.

“Cute kid.” He coughed, the red on his cheeks brighter.

Biz fell all over herself—literally—in his presence, and he just got cockier. Gilly compared him to a movie star and he took it as his due. But little Molly Kinneson decided to worship him and suddenly he was
modest
? Where had that come from? Biz began to wonder if she would ever see the real Mark Ellison beneath his chameleon surface.

Not that she wanted to know the real Mark Ellison. Not at all. She just wanted him to leave.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, not caring how rude she sounded. He’d avoided the stalking question, she noticed. Couldn’t a girl enjoy the best breakfast on the Eastern seaboard without being reminded of the day of death steadily approaching?

“I was walking by and I saw you through the window. What can I say, I felt compelled to come talk to you.” He slid into the booth beside her, his large body crowding against her. “Mind if I join you?”

Compelled. Oh, God.
Last night she’d been so stupid to stay in his presence for even a nanosecond. She needed to keep her distance.

She scooted her hip away from his. “Would you leave if I said yes?”

“Not if I can change your mind.” His smile said he was sure he could. The man certainly didn’t lack for confidence.

“You know, at some point that arrogance is just sickening.”

He leaned closer, revealing little crinkles around his eyes when he smiled. “Do I sicken you, Biz?”

No, sir.
That definitely wasn’t the problem.

She put her hand on his chest and shoved him back. He let her move him but gave just enough pressure that she felt the imprint of his muscles against her fingers.
Yum.
“Does no one ever say no to you?”

“No is just a point to begin negotiations.”

“No means no, honey.”

“Does it? Do you mean it, Biz? If you really mean it, just say the word and I’ll leave.”

“Before or after you get your interview?”

He shrugged. “There are other stories. This may come as a shock to you, but lots of people
want
to be interviewed by me.”

She’d buy that lots of people probably fell all over themselves to give him their stories—over and over and over again—but she didn’t believe he would give up and walk away so easily. He was lying, or at least not giving the whole truth, and not just because he was trapped by the curse. There was something else.

Molly appeared suddenly at the table, carrying the largest glass of orange juice Biz had ever seen and all but trembling with eagerness to serve. “You can interview
me
,” she vowed breathily.

Biz stole a look at Mark’s face. Definitely blushing.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly, inclining his head to indicate the gratitude was for the juice, not her adoration.

When Molly continued to hover, Gillian rolled her eyes. “Molly, can we get our check?”

The girl made a small protesting sound in her throat but backed away from the table, her eyes still fixed on Mark.

When she disappeared into the kitchen, he draped his arm across the back of the booth behind Biz and leaned toward her with an inviting gleam in his eyes. “See? Some people like me.”

“I don’t dislike you,” Biz admitted grudgingly.

“Is that why you sicced the town on me?”

Biz glanced guiltily across the table at Gillian who shrugged, her eyes flicking back and forth between Mark and Biz. “Don’t look at me. I’m just a spectator.”

Mark leaned closer. “I’ve been interrogated more in the last twenty-four hours than most terror suspects.”

“Not so much fun when you’re the one answering the questions, is it?”

“As a matter of fact, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Fascinating town you’ve got here. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I was asked…let alone some of the things I was told.”

Nervousness filled her stomach with lead-winged butterflies.

“Ghosts, witches. It’s amazing what people believe, isn’t it?”

Oh, crud.
He knew
. Somehow he knew everything. “You don’t believe in ghosts?” she asked, her voice sounding choked and unnatural, even to her own ears.

“
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…
” He grinned. “I believe in possibilities, but the spirit of loved ones living on after their death seems more like a coping mechanism than truth to me. Like all those suckers who pay out the nose so some medium can reconnect them with their dead father one last time. It’s wishful thinking.”

Relief flooded her. He couldn’t know. You couldn’t know something if you didn’t believe it existed.

She should have just shut up and let it go at that, but his words were a challenge to her world view, and in her relief she couldn’t keep quiet. “You don’t believe their father’s spirit is still out there, watching over them?”

“It’s not the father’s spirit I don’t believe in. It’s the medium. If Daddy was really watching over you, he’d keep you away from conmen like that.”

“So what if there were unexplained events that showed
Daddy
was looking after his kids? A stray breeze that opens a door when your arms are full or a door you’re sure you locked being open when you’ve forgotten your keys? Maybe a radio stuck on his favorite station?”
Or a chef preparing all your meals for you for a year after his death…
“How would you explain that?”

“Maybe it’s coincidence. Hell, maybe it is Daddy. I just think we’re too eager to read into those events what we want to see in them.”

“Such a cynic.”

“Such a realist.” He grinned, suddenly intimately close again. “What do you believe, Biz?”

A warning voice told her not to talk to him, to walk away and leave him with his rationalizations, but she’d never been very good at listening to warning voices.

You can’t keep a good Secret for long.

A Bloody Good Secret

© 2011 Sierra Dean

Secret McQueen, Book 2

After cheating death twice in one night, confessing her true nature to her werewolf soul mates and being asked to kill one of her closest friends, Secret took a much-needed vacation. By running away.

Now she’s back in town—dragged kicking and screaming—determined to clear Holden Chancery’s name. Right after she finds out what he’s accused of. It shouldn’t be hard—Holden has a habit of using their new and scintillating psychic bond to break into her thoughts and dreams at some very, shall we say,
awkward
moments.

Just a few things stand in her way: a secretive Tribunal leader, a group of would-be vampire slayers and two werewolf boyfriends who refuse to let her operate in her customary lone-wolf style. Even less amusing are the terrifying creatures that someone is using in an attempt to gain control of the council. Even for this out-of-the-ordinary bounty hunter, it’s a challenge with potentially deadly teeth.

Warning: Contains an ever-plucky heroine with no shortage of weapons, super-hot mind games, an ever-complicated love triangle and one hell of a creepy amusement park.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
A Bloody Good Secret:

Lucas’s kiss was gentle, inquiring and exploratory. He hugged me tighter, keeping me close to his body, and lifted my feet off the floor entirely. The last time he’d done this I had tangled myself around him, but tonight I was still too hyperaware of having made love to Desmond and the strange overlap that had shown up with Holden. I wasn’t ready to go through it again. I also wasn’t quite ready to be the kind of girl who could have sex with two different men in one night. At least on the physical plane.

Call me old-fashioned, but having two boyfriends was already hard enough for me to wrap my head around.

He continued to kiss me, and I let him, enjoying each delicate kiss we shared. The way his tongue tasted like cinnamon hearts when he licked my lower lip was a small treat I had forgotten, and it made me long to make each kiss more lingering. But the beard was weirding me out a little, and I couldn’t ignore every other part of the evening.

I was also acutely aware this bedroom was smaller than the one he had in the city, and we were a hell of a lot closer to the bed. I didn’t want to tempt fate too much, and the longer I let him kiss me like this, the more likely I was to say
fuck it
and, well, fuck it.

“Put me down.”

He ignored me, holding me closer and kissing my earlobe.

“Lucas, please.”

He stopped, pulled his head back and looked at me with those searing light-blue eyes. They didn’t hold the same kind of pain Desmond’s always seemed to, but Lucas’s were now less innocent than they had once been. I didn’t want to think about the last time I’d looked into his eyes. He lowered me back to the ground, but he didn’t let me go. He put one hand on either side of my face and kissed my forehead.

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“About that.” I looked up at him and tried to ask the question that had followed us in from outside. I still wasn’t sure how to word it. “Jackson?” It was the best I could do.

“You don’t want to know about that, Secret.” Lucas let his arms drop and stepped away from me. The disappearance of his body heat left me chilled in my soaking-wet shirt. Or maybe something else was leaving me cold.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know. Do you know what Jackson did to me?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “You do?”

“Of course. Your boss, your vampire boss…the blond one?”

“Sig?” Why was that name coming up everywhere I went tonight?

“He came to me, and we had a little chat about a mutual friend of ours.” He shot me a meaningful look. “It seems he was very grateful to me for saving your life.”